The words. It hadn’t been those words. Those—were wrong.
She’d go, but she couldn’t see.
Mac shoved her hands outward, pushing at the darkness.
The darkness burned.
She screamed as her fingers dissolved, as the backs of her hands caught fire, as the bones within her palms curled like putty and dripped away. Drip. Drip.
She screamed as the drips were sucked into mouths—into mouths that insisted, in their soft, reasonable voices, voices of friendship, of trust:
“We told you to go, lamisah. We warned you. Didn’t we?”
Her arms went next . . .